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By Robert Bly

Your head is still
restless, rolling
east and west.
That body in you
insisting on living
is the old hawk
for whom the world
darkens.
If I am not
with you when you die,
that is just.


It is all right.
That part of you cleaned
my bones more
than once. But I
will meet you
in the young hawk
whom I see
inside both
you and me; he
will guide
you to the Lord of Night,
who will give you
the tenderness
you wanted here.


Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: The Poetry Anthology 1912-2002 (2002)

  • Living
  • Relationships

Poet Bio

Robert Bly
Robert Bly was born in western Minnesota, and he attended Harvard University and the University of Iowa. He was a prolific author who published more than 30 books of poetry and edited a magazine to introduce foreign poets to an English audience. He also gave workshops on masculinity based on his book Iron John: A Book about Men, the founding text of the mythopoetic men's movement. In his early poems such as "Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River" and "Waking from Sleep," Bly used descriptions of American geography to evoke a feeling of solitude and isolation and to reveal a consciousness merging those emotions with landscapes. See More By This Poet

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